1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to networks and more specifically relates to accessing networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, access to communication systems has followed one of two patterns. Either the system allowed completely planned access, utilizing a control channel and other channels assigned through the control channel (traditional cellular systems for example) or the system allowed unplanned access, such as listening for space/time on a network and then squeezing packets into the space/time available (such as a traditional Ethernet/token ring for example). It will be appreciated that each of these styles of access either suffers from high overhead (a dedicated control channel) or potentially high latency (a situation where no space/time for packets is available). In either instance, the lack of availability of the full network resources on a priority basis can degrade performance of the network.